CompuKol Connection » Web Content

Use SEO as a Tool to Satisfy Clients

Carolyn Cohn — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an extremely valuable tool to give to your clients so that their business capabilities are enhanced and so that they have a greater chance of succeeding through their online business capabilities and interactions.

Please forgive the constant repetition of the phrase “Content Is King”; however, truer words were never written. The way that you and your business will succeed through your social media interactions is with your content. Of course, it goes without saying that your content has to be well written, exciting, and informative. The fact is that you have tremendous capabilities when it comes to providing your clients with valuable content. The big question, now that you have the content to share with your clients, is how you truly give them what they want and need in order for them to succeed in their businesses.

Find out what they want and need

Sometimes the most simplistic approach is the most effective one. When it comes to clients, the majority of them won’t mind if you ask them what they want. In fact, it will probably make them happy to know that you are definitely putting their needs first by asking them how you can solve their problems. A great first step when it comes to gathering information about what your customers want and need is to send them a survey (through a free survey tool like Survey Monkey or Zoomerang). Once you have signed up for one of those services, you will need to create some questions, such as

How can you help them to run their business more effectively?
What do they consider the most valuable among your products and/or services and why?
Exactly what do they lose sleep over when it comes to their business?
What improvements would they like to see when it comes to your business offerings?

Your questions should be clear and concise and, of course, they should focus on the needs of your particular target market. There is nothing worse for the recipient than long-winded and/or numerous questions. You may also want to consider offering an incentive as a reward for taking the time to answer your survey (such as a discount coupon, free gift, etc). This will make your clients happy and it will cause your relationship to grow stronger.

The responses to your survey

After you have gathered the responses to your survey questions, you need to study them very carefully. Be prepared to receive both positive and negative comments. As painful as it may be to receive negative comments, you should be open minded and use them as a learning and growing experience for your business. Those comments may make you aware of an issue that you didn’t know existed. You can’t fix something that you don’t know about. As a result, you will be improving upon your existing offerings and presenting superior products and/or services. You should ask yourself the following questions based on the results of the survey:

What additional services can I provide to my clients based on their feedback from the survey?
What specific changes can I make to what I am offering?
How can I fulfill my clients’ needs in a unique fashion?

Once you have come up with answers to those questions, it will be time to take action. With the feedback in mind, you can provide effective and helpful content that the search engines will love. The content should contain what offerings from what the clients asked for. If you are at all unclear about how to focus your content in that direction, your hints are in the feedback from your clients (look for the strongest and most prevalent keywords and key phrases).

SEO content writing results

After you have formulated your plan and have added the effective content to your website (or other elements of your web presence), you need to find out if what you did was effective. Keywords and key phrases are at the heart of what is important when it comes to content and SEO. The way to truly measure the results is by looking at an analytics tool (such as Google Analytics). This will tell you where the clients are going.

Once you have identified that information, you will be able to understand what your clients want and need. There is no better source than your clients to know what you need to do in order to make them happy.

Conclusion

SEO is an extremely important and useful tool when it comes to the success of your business. It isn’t just an acronym that people utter with no strength behind it. It is a critical part of your business’s success when it comes to online interactions and online relationships. The more valuable the information that you share with other people is, the stronger and more long lasting your relationships will be. That also means that the quality of your SEO must be top notch. Of course, that will ultimately translate into more success.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. For a free assessment of your online presence, let's have coffee.

You might also like:

Honing Your Writing Skills Through Social Media

Carolyn Cohn — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Now that you are writing content and posting it on your chosen social media channels, your writing skills are bound to be improving. Even if you were a great writer before, social media can help you become even better.

When you write content for business, your approach to the language should be totally different than it is if you are posting content for personal use. The language that you use for business is much more formal than when you are sharing it with friends and family. The chances are great that the quality of your writing is a lot better now than when you first started writing and posting your content. The approach that you now take is much less selfish and focuses much more on other people. It is geared to reaching out to them and addressing their needs and wants. The following points may illustrate the differences that you see from your original writing to your writing style now:

More “them” and less “you”: You now write a lot less about what you need and want and how wonderful you are. Instead, you gear your writing toward how you can help other people to solve their problems. In other words, you practice the marketing principle of “WIIFM” (What’s In It For Me).
Clear and concise: Your writing used to be verbose and unending. Now, you write clearly and concisely. You choose your words very carefully, knowing that your readers don’t have the time or the patience to read encyclopedias. At the same time, you want to give them something of value that they can benefit from.
No editing required: You no longer see the value in big words that are only used for the sake of appearing impressive. They serve no purpose for your readers (or, in turn, for you). Knowing (or hoping) that your content will be shared by others, the last thing that you want is for someone else to have to edit what you post in order to make it suitable to share with other people. If your content needs to be edited, people will not make the effort as frequently to share it as they would if all they had to do was push to button to send it to other people.
Social media appropriateness: Writing content for social media is very different than writing content for any other medium. You are now able to effectively communicate your ideas in short and compelling ways. If you have a lot more that you feel you want to write on any given subject, you use a different forum (such as a blog or Ebook) to do so.
No more writer’s block: You used to experience writer’s block quite frequently. Now that you have been writing for a while, your creative juices are flowing more easily than ever before. One of your biggest sources of inspiration can be what other people are writing. Ideas for your content can come from many different sources.
Interactive discussions: You are involved with a lot of interactive discussions based on the content that you are posting and sharing. Those discussions (on many occasions) result in ideas for more content. People love to know that their needs are being met and that their interests are being satisfied. If you write on topics that other people tell you they would like to read about, you will be building strong relationships and they will eventually become loyal customers of yours.
Write everyday: The more you write, the better your writing skills will be. If you make it a point of writing something every single day, you will find that the effort will pay off for you. By writing everyday, you are forcing yourself to evaluate your work carefully and really hone your skills, including identifying both your strong and weak points.

Conclusion

As important as it is to be persistent and consistent when it comes to your writing online, it is also important to make sure that you manage your time effectively when it comes to your involvement in social media. You should make a commitment for a certain, finite amount of time and stick as closely to that as you possibly can. When you are not interacting (or doing other important, work-related, necessary things), you should continue to hone your writing skills. The more you write, the better a writer you will become. Other people are bound to appreciate the quality of your writing and you will be tremendously proud of what you have accomplished.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. For a free assessment of your online presence, let's have coffee.

You might also like:

Building an Inbound Marketing Strategy

Michael Cohn — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 10:00:00 +0000

You are used to traditional marketing but people are talking about inbound marketing. With traditional marketing, you pursue your customers. With inbound marketing, you get your customers to come to you. Because they come to you willingly, they are prequalified.

Traditional marketing versus inbound marketing

Traditional marketing: Because of the way in which traditional marketing is set up, it covers impressions and interruptions. That means that everything is covered: advertising space, air time, mailing lists, etc. The concept is that you spend as much money as possible to make sure that you beat out your competition.

Inbound marketing: At the heart of inbound marketing is content and relationships. Inbound marketing allows everyone to succeed in business and based on the principle of persistence, consistency, creativity, and interaction. With inbound marketing, you don’t need to make a huge financial investment in order to make it succeed. You do, of course, have to make an investment but it is an investment of time, effort, and consistent publication and syndication. Because inbound marketing is relatively new, it is still evolving and changing, although the general principles have been established for a while.

When you are thinking about your social media strategy using inbound marketing, there are several steps that you should follow.

Establish your brand and make sure that you are able to differentiate it from other brands on the market
Build (or have built) a web presence that is content centric
Try and consider the “big picture” as much as possible. If you can, try to imagine how it will impact everyone, not just your particular target audience
Have established goals and objectives in mind when you first begin to implement your marketing strategy. The more successful you marketing strategy is, the more successful your business will be on the whole
Keep a specific budget in mind for your online marketing strategy
Set milestones and timelines and specific responsibilities and action items
Use one or more the analytics tools to have a constant understanding of how well your online marketing efforts are doing

In addition to taking the initial steps to set up your online marketing strategy, there are several steps that you should take to maintain your strategy over time.

Project a marketing strategy over the next year for your brand, content, search capabilities, and web presence
Chart your business’s activities, including task lists, tactics, timelines, and allotments of time and money
Examination of keywords and key phrases to make sure that you are using the most effective ones for your target audience
A calendar that includes budgets, timing for blog articles, case studies, eBooks, white papers, videos, and webinars
Dashboard for social media activities, including groups, forums, blogs, and online networks
A database for opportunities to deliver presentations to people (face to face)

Conclusion

Inbound marketing is an extremely powerful and effective marketing approach that is driving the success of many different businesses around the world today. If you feel that your business will benefit from this particular marketing approach, you should learn as much as possible about how to use it most effectively and efficiently for your particular business. Because inbound marketing has not been around nearly as long as traditional marketing, many people are skeptical about putting in the effort for something that may or may not work (in their minds). You will see that it is totally worth the effort. It is important to continue to be flexible and to keep an open mind when it comes to building your business. Remember that you will be getting your customers to come to you willingly and eagerly. What could be better than that for your business?

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. For a free assessment of your online presence, let's have coffee.

You might also like:

Turning Data Into Content Through Social Media

Carolyn Cohn — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 09:00:00 +0000

Data as it relates to your business can be used in several ways and serve many different purposes. From a marketing perspective, data can be turned into content and published and syndicated.

Of course, the next question is how to turn the data into content in the most effective way possible.

The first step

The first thing that you should do when you want to turn your data into content, which you will then share through social media, is to look at your keywords and how effective they are at drawing web traffic to your business. Once you have identified your strongest and most effective keywords, you should concentrate on the tweets that drew the most attention and the other social media updates that attracted the greatest number of people. With Twitter, you can identify the most popular tweets through lists. Because of the large volume of content, people don’t have the patience or the time to read everything so if you give them something that they can skim, they will usually be willing to skim to find information that is of interest to them.

Gathering a variety of concepts

There are several different ways to share your content though social media. There are some approaches that are basic and involve common sense and there are others that are more complex and not for everyone, depending on your particular business and your particular business approach. The approach that you use should be geared toward your particular target audience. For example, if you write an article and send the title to many different people and places, the result will be that it will pique the interest of other people enough to want to go further. It is an excellent introduction to what will come later, which is the sharing of the actual article. Many people are interested in short, quick bits of information that they find compelling and that stick with them.

Turning data into content

When you actually turn your data into content is when you truly demonstrate just how creative you are. As you are going through your data and analyzing what you have collected, you will begin to identify which information is appropriate to share and you will start to be able to pick out the gems that will be most valuable in the eyes of other people. It is very important to remember not to seem as though you are trying to sell something by sharing the information online. You will see that the data that you are expressing through your content will be fascinating to other people because they will be able to apply at least some of the concepts to their own businesses and they may be able to use the information to help their businesses to become even more successful.

The way that people communicate

Customers and potential customers reach out to businesses in very different ways than they did in the past. With the social media revolution, when a person is interested in a particular product or service, the first thing that they do is to search for the product or service on one of the many search engines. Next, they go directly to one of the websites that appears toward the top of the search engine page. Once they have visited the website and have determined that they like what is being offered, they will try to communicate more directly with the people who run that particular business. Their third vehicle of communication is often their mobile device. The end result of all of those interactions is that relationships are being built in the process. Online interactions are all about building relationships and the concept of helping other people to solve their particular problems should always be top of mind. Once you have accomplished all of that, people will feel that you know what you are talking about and that you are trustworthy. It is extraordinarily important that you make your business and your business offerings readily available so that people can find you easily.

Conclusion

Everything follows a process. In this case, collecting the data from your business is the initial part of the process. The next part is actually converting that data to content, which you will then publish and syndicate to many other people through social media. All of the different elements that go into effective social media communication are important and, in fact, are essential to success. Always bear in mind that you need to cater to the needs of other people and if you are able to satisfy their needs, they will, in turn, want to do business with you and interact with you more and more over time.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. For a free assessment of your online presence, let's have coffee.

You might also like:

Writing Content That Gets Noticed

Carolyn Cohn — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 09:00:00 +0000

You have been blogging for some time now. Since you started, you feel that you have established a momentum. However, your content isn’t getting as much as attention as you want. You need get it noticed by more people.

There is a mutual need when it comes to online content. You need to share content that will touch other people to the point where they will react positively and want to interact with you and build a relationship because of your content (with the eventual goal of their becoming your client). On the other side, your readers have a need to absorb content that they can learn from and that helps them to solve whichever issues they are encountering. High-quality content gets noticed and it helps you to gain more traffic and to be recognized for your accomplishments by others. There are several approaches that you can take when it comes to writing content that is attractive to other people. Before you start, you must be very clear on what your goals and objective are, who your target audience is, and exactly what you are offering to other people.

Your reason for existing

It is a known fact that you only have three seconds to attract your readers enough for them to want to continue reading. If you don’t grab them within those three seconds, it’s over as far as that particular piece of content is concerned. With that in mind, the way in which you state your purpose for taking up the space with your content must be very clear and extraordinarily compelling. Always keep the concept of WIIFM (What’s In It For Me) at the forefront of your mind. I must always be about how you are going to help the other person. In doing so, your needs will also be fulfilled. If they can’t glean the information of how you are able to help them from your content, they will quickly move on to someone else’s content. Upon first glance, the most important elements of your article are the title and the teaser paragraph. They better really pack a punch. Other elements that you should keep in mind are your domain name, tag line, and look and feel of your blog. All of those elements will give your reader a really good idea of what they can expect from you if they decide to engage with you and your business.

Your content should never be long winded. Bullet points work very well in the blog setting. They allow the reader to understand a lot of important information in short spurts, which means that they will probably do a good job of remembering what you have written. Lists work effectively for the same reason. The majority of people scan rather than reading entire articles. People don’t like to work too hard when it comes to reading content. Along those same lines, your paragraphs should be short (no more than three or four sentences) for the same reason. People will be much more likely to absorb your information is it goes into their heads quickly and easily. A one-paragraph in a blog article (under the right circumstances) is acceptable also.

Enticing headlines

If your headline grabs the reader, they will definitely want to read more. Your headline should tell the reader what the rest of your article is about and how it can solve their issues. A great way to come up with compelling headlines is if you gather compelling headlines that other people have written. If you can identify why they work, you can mimic them in your own writing and captivate your readers.

One of the main objectives when it comes to your headlines is to get to understand your target audience and how they think and what they feel. Try to identify which keywords and key phrases they are using to search for the content that they need. Basically, you need to try and get inside their heads. If you can do that, you will be golden. Also, always remember to write with the emotional element in mind. People respond to ideas that touch them emotionally.

Using graphics

Nobody wants to read only words all of the time. Graphics and other images are very important because they break up the content and make it pleasing for the reader. Images (if used appropriately) can be even more effective than words are. Readers will react favorably to them and will want to continue reading and will really want to be a part of whatever you are offering.

Give others the benefit of your expertise

Other people are constantly thirsting for knowledge. The more you can share, the better they will feel about you and your content. For that reason, you should be very careful with the way in which you choose your keywords and key phrases. There is definite skill involved with choosing the most effective ones and it is well worth the time that it takes to learn how to do that most effectively.

Choosing the best topics

Always choose topics that excite you. If they excite you, other people will be excited by them also. If you have a passion for the topics about which you write, other people will understand that passion and will react to it favorably. The choice of topic is critical to your success.

Conclusion

Your content should be the absolute best that it can be. It should be exciting, informative, educational, compelling, and enticing. Remember that your topics should vary over time but always be interesting and always offer solutions to the issues of your readers. If you always write with others in mind, you will succeed at getting your content noticed over and over again.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. For a free assessment of your online presence, let's have coffee.

You might also like:

RSS Feeds for Your Blog – Long or Truncated

Michael Cohn — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 09:00:00 +0000

Your blog is extremely important to you and the Real Simple Search (RSS) feed is a critical part of the success of your blog. All blogs come with an RSS feed for your readers and you can choose truncated or full.

The simpler you make it for your readers to receive your content the more successful your blog will be. And, of course, your main objective when it comes to your blog is to get large numbers of people to subscribe to your blog and to keep coming back for more. The more the better. There are several possible ways that you can go when it comes to search options that you can offer your readers so that they receive your content easily and quickly. In addition to those options, you should determine whether it makes more sense for your blog to use full or truncated RSS feeds. Full RSS feeds means that you have the entrire article at your disposal. Truncated RSS feeds are abbreviated and you need to take an extra step to access the article. There are several advantages and disadvantages to both.

Using long RSS feeds

Many bloggers choose this option. The main reason that this is a good option is because you are always guaranteed to be able to read the full article that is being offered. Just like it is with anything; however, full RSS feeds have positives and negatives that you will want to consider before you decide whether full or truncated makes more sense for you and your business.

The positives

The ability to preview: When people first visit your blog, they don’t know anything about you or what you are offering. Most people would choose to preview your content. They will know in the first three seconds whether they are interested enough to continue. They preview your content by going through your RSS feed archives. If you are offering the full RSS feed, they can get a really good sense of what you are saying and that will most likely encourage them to read on.

Syndicating: As a blogger, you want your blog articles to be picked up by other social media channels, business directories, etc. If you write a blog article and don’t syndicate it, it is like opening a casino in the middle of the desert. It will just sit there and won’t provide any real value to anyone. Of course, it is extremely important to choose the channels to which you would like to syndicate carefully. You will want to target the places that have the most high-quality traffic and ones where people want to interact a great deal.

Giving your readers options: Your readers will always be able to read your full articles with this RSS feed option.

The negatives

Giving away too much too soon: With the full RSS feed, the negative might be that you are making it too easy for your readers. Because a nice amount of information is made readily available to them, they have the ability to skim and not be forced to read the full article in order to get the full gist of what you are saying. They don’t really have to make any sort of commitment or do any work.

Scraping your content: One of the issues with all RSS feeds is that other blogs can scrape (or take) your content and put it on their blogs. Even though you can put an attribution line at the end of the article, the article can still appear in its entirety in many other places.

Using truncated RSS feeds

Now that the positives and negatives of full RSS feeds have been discussed, let’s look at the positives and negatives of truncated RSS feeds. There are some basic differences and some not-so-obvious ones.

The positives

Holding your readers’ attention: Humans have an extremely short attention span when it comes to reading blog articles. That is precisely why they really like to be able to skim content and get enough of an idea of what the content is all about. If they determine from the skimming that your content is relevant to them and that they find value in it, they will go further. Remember, they will be able to determine that in the first few seconds of skimming.

Lots of traffic: This one is pretty obvious. Full RSS feeds will bring you lots of traffic. It gets people to click on the main article. This increases your number of unique visitors and grows your traffic base.

Blogging from mobile devices: Some mobile devices automatically truncate; however, some don’t. A truncated RSS feed makes it much easier for people who are using a mobile device to skim.

Earning potential: Truncated RSS feeds give you the potential to bring in more revenue to your business because they force your readers to make more effort to read your content.

The negatives

The ability to write: There is a definite art to writing teaser copy. If you are only offering a snippet of content in order entice your readers, that copy better be really good. It must be powerful and compelling and enticing and exciting, all at the same time. It is much more difficult to accomplish this when you have a limited amount of space.

Giving your readers limitations: It is very possible that some of your readers may feel that the amount of information that they get with a truncated RSS feed is not enough for them to know whether they want to continue reading.

Limited exposure to other social media channels, etc: With truncated RSS feeds, there are some social media channels, directories, etc, that may not accept your content because they just don’t allow excerpts. Full RSS feeds have a better chance of being accepted.

Misunderstandings: At times, when content is truncated, the meaning can appear one way but when the full content is read, the meaning is something else entirely. That can prove to be frustrating for your readers at times.

Conclusion

As you have read, there are pros and cons to both the full and the truncated RSS feed. Your choice of the two options depends entirely on what you feel will work best for you. Remember that if you choose one of the options, you don’t necessarily have to stick with that. You can always try the other one.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. For a free assessment of your online presence, let's have coffee.

You might also like:

Social Networking -The Three Cs

Carolyn Cohn — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 09:00:00 +0000

Social networking does a great deal to enhance your professional and personal experience online. Personally, it allows you to connect with others easily. Professionally, it helps you to develop relationships. It is about creation, curation, and consumption. To tie in creation, curation, and consumption with social networking and online relationships, you create an online presence that is a reflection of your personality and your values. Once you have created your presence, you share it with others and continue to build new relationships as well as strengthen and maintain existing relationships. Once you have gotten that part of the equation to be exactly what you need it to be and you have confidence that everything is working well, you become the consumer (not only you, although you are one of the important players). You devour content that is shared with you and you continue to cultivate and enhance relationships with others that become stronger and stronger over time.

Social media is all about relationships—strengthening existing relationships, establishing new relationships, bringing relationships to new levels. The relationships that we share with others really help us to share information that we feel is valuable to others and that we feel will enhance the other person’s knowledge in some way. With the technology giving us the advantages that it has given us for some time now on a consistent basis, it has put us in a position to have much more control over what we do and how we form relationships.

Each time we start to establish a new relationship, we are in a position where we must share personal details with the other person. Many times, these are details that we probably would not share under other circumstances. As we reveal details about ourselves, we will also, in turn, learn interesting details about the other person. Those details will cause us to get closer to the other person. Once the foundation has been built and it continues to grow stronger and stronger, it will cause both sides to trust the other and credibility will be established.

The motivation behind the relationship

Social networking works because of people. They are at the heart of every aspect of successful interactions. What motivates us initially to build relationships may not turn out to be what actually sustains the relationships. That is not really important. The important thing is that the relationship is strong and mutually beneficial. In all meaningful relationships, both sides need to get something out of the interactions. If that is not the case, everything will fall apart and the relationship will not be able to be sustained. In your interactions with people, content is critical. The quality of the content and to what degree it will help other people is very important. It is just as important as the delivery of that content and the approach that you take to deliver that content. The better your approach is to other people, the more inclined they will be to interact with you.

Creation, curation, and consumption

The foundational aspects of social networking—creation, curation, and consumption (the 3 Cs), if executed properly, will carry you though and you will enjoy success in all of your relationships. If you create worthy content, content that other people feel they can use and that touches them in some way that they need, they will respond positively to you. The social media channels are successful and popular because of content. It isn’t about lengthy content (for example, Twitter only allows a 140-character maximum). It is about good-quality content. Now that we have been using social media for a few years, we have moved beyond the novelty of the initial concept and on to the next level of sophistication. Because of this, it is critical that business owners truly understand how to connect to their target audience in a way that really causes high-quality interactions. The content needs to be compelling and enticing and really helpful.

The idea that many people have not jumped on the social media bandwagon yet is moot. The fact is that a very high percentage of people nowadays do engage with social media. The issue now is how to get them to be excited about doing it more often. You have the power to make this happen.

Once you have created the content, you need to share it and it needs to be devoured by others. You want them to engage with you as often as possible. This is a good thing in many way. First, it drives traffic to your website or blog. Second, it creates relationships with people who will hopefully (eventually) become loyal customers.

Conclusion

In any aspect of business, if you don’t have a strong and proper foundation, everything will crumble eventually. The 3 Cs must be a part of that foundation. It is important to remember that you are doing all of this for others, all the while understanding that you will benefit from it as well. Social networking brings your relationships to a level that allows you and your business to grow tremendously. It enhances every aspect of your business, from branding to building customer loyalty to actually selling your products and/or services.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. For a free assessment of your online presence, let's have coffee.

You might also like:

How to Avoid the Hard Sell in Your Content

Michael Cohn — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 09:00:00 +0000

You have established yourself as a subject matter expert in your niche. People continue to read your content because it offers answers to their problems. What they don’t want from you is to do a hard sell on them.

If you try to overtly sell anything to anyone, you will most likely not succeed and in the process, you may lose some very valuable business relationships. In fact, if your writing is about selling, they won’t bother to read your content at all. They will read other people’s content and become loyal to them instead of to you.

When it comes to your promoting your business, there is definitely an appropriate place and time to communicate about what you offer. In fact, it is appropriate to put your call-to-action in a resource box at the bottom of a blog article that you have posted and syndicated as well as putting some type of promotional content on your website’s landing page. Of course, it is not advisable for you to do this before you have established a relationship with your online connections that is solid and one in which those people find you credible and trustworthy. It is extremely important that your content is informational and educational and doesn’t in any way read like an infomercial.

Another good reason to steer clear of self-promotion in your content is that you will have a more difficult time getting it published, especially if you submit your articles to business directories. The reputable business directories have strict guidelines when it comes to what they will accept and what they will not accept. There are many ways in which content can come across as being self-promotional, which should be avoided whenever possible. The following are types of content that you would be better off avoiding:

Mentioning money: Mentioning any money amount in your articles does not offer any real value to your readers. It doesn’t give them anything that they can walk away with. It is no different than the content that you would find in an advertisement. On the other hand, if you give people information that they want and need, they will keep coming back to you for more and more information.
Dropping names: The only appropriate place to put your call-to-action in your article is in the resource box at the bottom of the page. The article body should be used for tips, hints, tricks, and other substantive copy. The concept is that you entice them with valuable information and once they have become interested in what you have to say, you provide them with a way to continue the relationship with you by giving them your contact information.
Reviews of other products: It is perfectly acceptable for you to post unbiased reviews of other people’s products and services as long as you have no connection to them. Remember, of course, that it is important that you don’t provide a direct link to the owner of the products and services because that would be promotional on their behalf.
No outline: Writing from an outline is a great tool. Once you have finished writing an outline that you feel you can depend on, you should stick to it as religiously as possible. The outline will keep you focused and on track in your mission to stay away from any sort of promotional content.
Wishy-washy messages in your title: It is very important to have a strong article title (always) and to also make sure that your title ties in closely with the rest of the article. Your message should be clear and focused. Your goal is to get your readers to stick with you and read the entire article and then want to read more and more of what you are writing.

The heart of the problem with content that is self-promotional

The problem with content that is self-promotional is that its goal is to convert readers into customers right away. It is not a healthy relationship if your readers become clients before you have had a chance to develop a relationship with them in which they have come to trust you and consider you an expert in your niche or industry. Building credibility is critical to the success of your business. If you don’t have credibility, you won’t have customers. You need to make sure that if you go anywhere near promotional ideas in your content, you are subtle and you don’t make it all about selling. It is always important to make the other person feel that they are in control of making their own decisions and if you build a solid relationship with him or her and they eventually want to buy from you, they will do so wholeheartedly.

Conclusion

The interactions that you have online for your business are key to your success. The relationships that you share with others must be cultivated, nurtured, coddled, and maintained on a regular and consistent basis. At the heart of those relationships is human emotions. The hard sell has no place in that phase of the relationship. The reason that people will eventually want to buy from you is that they trust you and believe that you will give them the best products and services for them based on your deep understanding of what they need and want.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. For a free assessment of your online presence, let's have coffee.

You might also like:

Building an Effective Content Strategy

Carolyn Cohn — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 09:00:00 +0000

All of your online marketing efforts will amount to nothing if you don’t have an incredible content strategy that will entice people into reading what you have to say and in wanting to read more and more from you.

If your content is really good, it will compel your visitors to connect with you and your business and will make them feel that they want to keep coming back. Good content will eventually result in people buying what you are selling. There is a very effective, methodical approach that you can use when it comes to your online content strategy.

Identify the issue and the need: It is critical that you always put yourself into the shoes of the other person. Not only should you empathize with the other person but you should always remember that your responsibility is to solve their issue(s). It doesn’t matter how wonderful you and your business are if you are not able to fulfill their wants and needs. Before you can actually help them with anything, you must establish a relationship with them. Of course, it stands to reason that you won’t be able to help anyone before you have established some level of trust. You must prove to your online connections that you are a person with whom they should connect because you have the knowledge and the power to help them solve their problems. You need to find out

Which issues they need help solving
Which information is important for them to have from you
What motivates them as customers
What they really need to know
How valuable they consider your products and/or services

Once you have proven to your online connections that you understand their issues, you will be able to help them to solve those issues.

Offer a solution: Remember never to do a hard sell on anyone. What you do need to do is to touch people emotionally. The way that you can appeal to their emotions is by expressing to them how much they will benefit if they use your products and/or services. You need to appeal to their needs so that means that you need to customize the description of your offerings to do just that. It needs to reach them in a way that makes them clearly understand that you have something that will satisfy their needs. All good content tells a story. In this case, the story makes them feel how much better their lives will be if they buy from you. Your content must be unique and must really express what you are offering in a way that only you can. In short, your content needs to make them feel as though they can’t live without what you are offering. Some of the questions that you need to answer with your content are

What does the product do?
What issue does the product resolve?
What makes your products and/or services completely unique?
How will your customers’ lives improve based on your products and/or services?

Getting people to act: If you succeed at getting people to act, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you are getting them to buy something. Your call-to-action can be as basic as asking people to sign up to receive your monthly newsletter, etc. The next step that you want your online connections to take should always be very easy and quick. Make sure that you are clear about what you want them to do. Never leave them confused about what they should do next. The questions that you should ask yourself before writing this part of the content are

Which action do you want your customers to take next?
Precisely what should they do next?
How will your next steps lead them to actually buy from you?
What specific information do they need to get them to the point where they actually buy?

Conclusion

Most people clearly recognize the importance of content when it comes to online presence in your business. Of course, it is not enough to just have excellent content. All content needs to be marketed appropriately and effectively and excellent content requires excellent-quality content. Your strategy of how you are going to make the most out of your content must be top notch and iron clad. Half of the battle is producing compelling content and the other half is sharing that content in a way that it will benefit the most people in the shortest amount of time. You must always go for maximum impact.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Would you like a free assessment of your online presence?

You might also like:

Having a Web Presence With Personality

Michael Cohn — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 09:00:00 +0000

As a business person, you must have a web presence that attracts other people to your business offerings and to your branding. If they aren’t attracted, they won’t go further to find out anything about you and you won’t succeed.

The first statement that you need to make (whether it is verbal or nonverbal) is that you are human, just like your prospective clients, and that you relate to them on a human level. It is a well-established fact that business success is all about building and maintaining relationships. If people can’t relate to you on a human level, there will be no relationship between you. One of the main attributes that will make you stand out among all of your competitors is that you care about your prospects’ wants and needs and that you consider it your responsibility to solve their problems.

The challenge of adding personality to your web presence

It doesn’t actually take a great deal of effort to add personality to your web presence. Your personality must come through in order for people to connect with you, on any level. You need to give others the opportunity to get to know you. If they don’t know you, there will be nothing driving them to choose you over someone else when it comes time to buying what you are selling. When you try to connect with people, you need to try to get them to give you some information that will establish the relationship between you. That has to work both ways. You must also give them something to relate to from you.

At times, it is difficult to come up with the perfect icebreaker to get the ball rolling. If your business is small, it will probably be easier than if you have a large company. However, it is certainly not impossible. A great way to break the ice is to get the other person to smile or laugh. You can use humor or perhaps, a heartfelt story that showcases your sensitivity as a person and as an organization. You can also break the ice through creative and interesting content that you share with other people.

Whatever you choose to share, make sure that it is unique and interesting. Others will remember your personality and will want to hear more about what you are doing. People are very interested to know that you are very good at what you do but at the same time, they also want to feel comfortable about doing business with you. Expressing to others that you are passionate about what you do and that you genuinely care about other people and want to give them what they need will be a tremendous attraction when it comes to deciding about whether or not to buy what you are selling. Your strong, positive feelings about what you are offering must come through in your communications with your visitors. Remember that if you can convince them to buy your products and/or services, you will be opening a door to many more selling opportunities.

The effect of having a personality in your web presence

When people are researching you and your business, they tend to find out about you and your company and what you stand for before they look into your products and/or services. A big mistake that many business owners make is that they don’t make the “About Us” page different than their products’ page. The “About Us” section must really grab the visitor and make them want to delve more deeply into what the person and his/her business is all about.

It is very important for you to share important aspects of who you are with your visitors. Adding personality to what you share with your visitors does not have a great deal of risk involved but the payoff may be huge. It will immediately make you stand out from your competition. In your “About Us” section, you should have information that is above and beyond your products and/or services. If you don’t feel comfortable about sharing personal information, you need to come up with other pieces of information that will draw them to you, such as your expressing your happiness when your customers are excited about what they have bought from you. Another good enticement is if you describe your level of service to your customers.

Conclusion

Personality in your web presence should be the equivalent of personality in your bricks and mortar store, if you had one of those. In other words, the second a client (or potential client) connects with you, they need to have a positive reaction to what you are telling them. If that doesn’t happen, they won’t stay. You need to entice them enough to really want to stay.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team and don’t forget to “like” our Facebook page.

You might also like: